Forty years ago, a McDonald’s opened near Rome’s treasured Spanish Steps.
Local people were none too happy. Instead of fanfare, the fast-food outpost received swift backlash against the global cultural homogenization it represented.
The tumult gave birth to the Slow Food Movement, a grassroots campaign to defend and promote regional heritage, culinary traditions, and a less frenetic pace of life. Since then, “slow food” has become part of a global lexicon whose principles have spread around the world.
In the U.S., nowhere has the movement’s focus on local, seasonal, farm-to-fork food been more profoundly embraced than in Northern California. So, when Slow Food International began to think about a second location for its legendary festival Terra Madre, which is held annually in Turin, Italy, they naturally gravitated toward the region.
A Terra Madre Americas tasting event(Courtesy of @slow_wine_usa)
Though multiple cities vied to host the event, they chose Sacramento for the honor.
“We grow so much of the nation’s agriculture,” says Mike Testa, president and CEO of Visit Sacramento. “There are 165 commodities coming out of this region, 1.5 million acres of farmland; we produce 85% of the nation’s caviar… There’s a real opportunity to educate people in this country about what is a way of life in Europe.”
It didn’t hurt that Sacramento had already been the site of the Farm-to-Fork Festival, a celebration attracting 100,000 people a year with the same concepts driving the Slow Food Movement. This year, Farm-to-Fork will be the street party that welcomes visitors to the Terra Madre Americas inside the city’s convention center, September 26-28. Both the indoor and outdoor festivities are free.
The three-day event will be chock-full of celebrity chef demonstrations, educational panels, and, of course, food. California’s tribal communities will have a big presence—organizers have partnered with 105 of them—as will UC Davis, the country’s top agriculture school.
A presentation at a Terra Madre Americas event from Slow Food Cuba(Courtesy of @slowfood_cuba)
“You get Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower in the same room, and that’s an interesting conversation,” says Testa. “Sean Sherman, coming from Minneapolis and a Native American standpoint, adds to that conversation.”
An impressive lineup of bands—names like The War on Drugs, Spoon, Passion Pit, and Big Head Todd and the Monsters that could easily hold their own at a festival solely for music—will form the soundtrack for Terra Madre Americas. As with the rest of the weekend’s goings-on, not one of their performances will cost a dime to see.
The concert element is one of the biggest differences between Sacramento’s Slow Food festival and the original in Turin. Another is, simply, geography. Since it’s primarily Europeans who have traditionally attended the event, “the idea behind Terra Madre Americas is to capture this portion of the globe, to spread that message across the world,” says Testa. “It’s hosted in America; it has to have an American twist.”
While in Turin the festival sparks activations at bars and restaurants across the city after hours, Testa says Sacramento’s business community may not be quite as all-in this September. But with an agreement to rotate the annual festival between the two cities for the next decade (Turin in even years, Sacramento in odd), they’re likely to catch on by the time Terra Madre Americas returns in 2027.
Like the Farm-to-Fork Festival in past years, Terra Madre Americas will include an impressive concert lineup.(Courtesy of @sacfarm2fork)
“If you go to Europe and talk about Slow Food, everyone seems to know what it is, but in the U.S. it’s not as well known,” says Testa. The fact nonetheless remains that the principles promoted by the movement are “better for consumers, better for the farmers, better for the planet.”
“The event,” he continues, “isn’t about Sacramento; it’s about bringing the culinary world to Sacramento.”
// Terra Madre Americas is Friday, Sept. 26th from 12pm to 8pm, Saturday, Sept. 27th from 10am to 8pm, and Sunday, Sept. 28th from 10am to 6pm, 1400 J St. (Sacramento), terramadreusa.com
